


Technopaths and Wires

by vamprav



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Magic, Podfic Welcome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-02
Packaged: 2019-01-05 19:22:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12196092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vamprav/pseuds/vamprav
Summary: Faraday had no idea what he'd gotten himself into, first he'd gotten his ship bought out from under him and then he'd agreed to go up against Pirate Barron Bogue. He doesn't even know why he thought this was a good idea because no one likes technopaths, especially not hot Mexican cyborgs.





	1. Joshua

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [With Fervent Heat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8908456) by [liggytheauthoress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liggytheauthoress/pseuds/liggytheauthoress). 



> I read Liggy's Bender fic and the thought of Faraday as a Technopath and blowing up a laser powered Gatling gun immediately popped into my head. Then magic showed up in my fic and suddenly Vasquez was a cyborg and here we are.

Prologue

Joshua

Joshua Faraday was born to a woman so down on her luck that four month into her pregnancy with the child of a pirate said pirate was hanged. She was young, pretty, had no more than two credits to her name, and that name wasn’t very impressive to begin with.

She’d ended up moving into the local brothel and that was where Joshua was born and lived for the first fifteen years of his life.

Joshua was an energetic boy and had never let the fact that he’d been born on the wrong side of the spaceport get him down. Sure he’d learned to read from his mama's Madame. Sure his mama didn’t bring in quite enough credits to keep the two of them fed all month long. But he was more intelligent than most of the kids coming out of the fancy private school across the way and he had only really gone hungry twice in his life.

By the time Faraday was seven he could read and write, do basic math, and rebuild a starship’s engine from scratch. And that was when he’d learned the three basic rules of survival, two of which he learned the bloody way.

The first he learns when his mother is working and he’s tinkering with an old com device that one of the Johns had left behind a month ago. The Madame was watching him with her usual hawkish stare, ready to jump to his rescue if he managed to burn himself or something. He couldn’t remember what he’d been trying to do, extend the range, probably when the screaming started.

“Pineapple princess! Don’t kill me! Oh Stardust don’t kill me!”

Madame had been on her feet in two seconds and rushed up the stairs three at a time. The first phrase was the brothel’s safeword, the words that meant a John had gone too far and one of the girls was scared out of her mind.

Joshua had followed Madame up the stairs because even if he was only seven years old people had a tendency to be less violent around children since harming one was an execution level offence on their planet and he was worried.

It wasn’t his mama who had screamed. It was one of the younger girls, barely legal but with a few years of experience in back alleys nonetheless.

The John was a big brute of a man wider around the middle than he was tall. He was middle aged with a few scars around his hands and face, the tell tale marks of a sailor on a rickety ship.

He was holding a butcher's knife in one hand and the girl’s hair in the other, she was still screaming her safe word as Madame burst into the room and the blade fell.

Later, after Madame had gutted the man and called the Independent Space Officers. After the blood was cleaned up and his mama had finished with her own John. After all that Madame had sat him down with a mug of hot chocolate and explained a few things to him.

“Some people will see you as less than human,” she’d said, “and if you’re not willing to give them what they want, even for money they’ll do their damned hardest to take it from you. Be it your clothes, your body, or your life.”

The second came when an IS Officers had strode into the brothel looking for a little entertainment and promptly been challenged to a fight with one of the Johns. The John had had to be taken to the hospital, the Officer didn’t have a scratch on him.

The third lesson came in the form of three of the girls seeing him stick his hand in a starship’s engine. They’d gone very quite and then gone to get the Madame, who explained a few more things to him.

Most people didn’t like Techies. 

Most everyone had a little bit of magic these days, even if it was only enough to light a candle but Technopaths were something else entirely. They could breathe life into a ship, literally giving it a consciousness that ran deeper than even the most advanced AIs and stop most technology dead in its tracks with little more than a flick of their wrist. And something about that power made people nervous.

So Joshua kept his gift quiet, made sure never to fiddle with tech in front of any of the Johns but he still used it. As he got older Madame started selling his tech on the side in exchange for room and board, encouraged the talent ever. Because repressed power was power uncontrolled and uncontrolled power had a tendency to, well explode would be an understatement.

His mother died when he was ten but Madame let him stay for another five years before she presented him with an apprenticeship on one of the ships that regularly docked at port.

He’d held his three lessons close to his chest for six months before he got sloppy and stuck his hand through the floor of the ship in front of the head engineer. He was promptly tossed off the ship, bloodier than when he’d been taken on.

Joshua was fifteen but his records said he was two years older with only the clothes on his back and ten credits to his name. There was nowhere for him to go and he didn’t need to try selling his body for him to know that line of work wasn’t for him. So he’d gone with his only other real option, walked into the nearest bar, and sat down at a table to play a game of poker.


	2. Chisolm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Faraday gets his ship bought out from under him and decides to join an IS Officer in saving a colony on another planet from a fucking pirate.

Chapter 1

Chisolm

Faraday refused to use his magic to cheat. It would be easy to, oh so easy, but Faraday always, always refuses to cheat. The encryption on the holo cards is shit enough for it and atleast five years out of date but cheating brokes all three of the rules he had made for himself regarding his magic.

It’s incredibly Flashy, completely Unethical, and too Risky. FUR had kept him safe since he’s been kicked off that fucking ship and he wasn’t going to abandon it now. But damn it, sometimes he wishes he would because the hand he was just given is utter crap.

He sighs and shifts in his chair to hide the obvious tell. He glances up to look at the bar and freezes when an IS Officer walks into the bar.

No one else seems to notice him as anything other than a man dressed in black, which is slightly disappointing but fair. The man wasn’t wearing a uniform and his badge was tucked away somewhere out of sight but Faraday had lived in a brothel for a little less than half of his life. When you lived in a place like that you learned to identify people for what they are by the way they held themselves and this man held himself like an Officer. The fact that Faraday could sense the nanites in the man’s blood helped confirm his suspicions.

It took a bit longer to figure out what he was there for but as soon as the Officer zeroed in on the bartender Faraday knew. He’d sensed something off about the man, something that made Faraday overly wary. Faraday normally listened to his instincts but he was a bit too strapped for cash to pass up a game at the only bar in town, he’d run out of tech to sell two planets back and wouldn’t be able to get more for a while yet.

Faraday didn’t know the specifics of what Dan had done but when he found out it made his skin crawl. Murder, arson, and rape, the first two were bad but rape…

“I don’t do that anymore.” Dan said, trying to negotiate. “I got a family now.”

One of the guys at Faraday’s table goes for his blaster but Faraday has his own trained on the man before he can get his hand on the handle. You did not piss off Officers, you just didn’t.

The Officer’s eyes narrow and he leans closer, sniffing the air. “They’re better off without you. You smell like gasoline, Dan, you wanna try that again?” He says.

And Faraday sees the exact moment that Dan realizes that the man’s an Officer. It’s funny actually, the shock and terror on his face until he goes for the blaster rifle he has under the counter and it abruptly isn’t because blood splatter is never a pretty sight.

Faraday took a puff of his cigarette and holstered his blaster. The Officer turns around to look at the room.

“Someone get the local Sheriff,” the man said and there was silent shock on everyone’s face.

No one moved, no one breathed.

The Officer put his hand on his blaster and the bar was abruptly empty. Empty except for the Officer, Dan’s cooling corpse, and Faraday.

“Pity,” Faraday mused, “I had just ordered a drink from him.”

The Officer turned to raise an eyebrow at him and then slid the drink he’d ordered across the bar in a clear invitation. Faraday nodded and stood.

“Thanks, Officer.” He said.

“You knew what I was before anyone else,” the Officer said.

And that wasn’t a statement, it was a question.

“You hold yourself different than most folk.” Faraday explained and the Officer nodded in thought.

And then he left to go talk to the Sheriff.

Faraday quickly scooped the credit chips on the table into his hat and walked out of the bar through the side entrance. He should get out of here, he’d been here too long.

~*****~

He hadn’t had anything against the Babbington brothers but they had touched his girls and his guns didn’t like being handled by anyone but him. That had pissed him off and then he’d come back to where he’d docked his ship to find that he’d somehow managed to gamble Jack away to the port manager.

For simplicity’s sake Jack was registered as an organic ship old enough to have a mind of its own. That wasn’t quite true, Jack had sure started out that way but once he’d gotten big enough to support a decent control room Faraday had woven inorganic parts into him. Then he’d built him a Construct and breathed life into him. Jack was unique but more importantly Jack was his.

“How much for his ship?” A voice said from behind him.

Faraday froze as the port manager rattled off a price and he turned to see the Officer from the bar.

“Our paths seem to be fixed on similar courses.” Faraday said. “What do I owe the pleasure?”

“I’m heading out to a job and looking for some men to join me.” The Officer said.

Faraday pondered as two people walked up to stand behind the Officer. “Money in it?” He asked, half expecting a no but instead getting a sack tossed at him by the woman of the pair.

He glanced inside. Diamonds? No, wait, not diamonds. Faraday poked them with the tiniest smidge of magic and they lit up like christmas in his mind’s eye. Data crystals, a whole sack of them. High quality too by the feel.

They would sell at an exorbitant price on the Galactic Market, why did two shabbily dressed nobodies have this fortune.

He whistled, “And who are these two?”

“Our employers.”

“Difficult?” he asked and tossed the sack back.

“Impossible.”

“How many you got so far?”

“Two, you and me.”

And that was more humor than Faraday had expected from an Officer. He laughed and shook his head.

“What’s your name, Officer?” Faraday asked.

“Sam Chisolm.”

“Joshua Faraday and if you get me and my ship out of this situation you’ve got my help. Who are we going after?”

“Bartolomeu Bogue.”

Well, that explained the data crystals, Bogue owned part of one of the colony worlds where the crystals were found. It was a legitimate claim, what he’d done to get that claim not so much but still.

Faraday grinned. “That pirate that tried to turn respectable but hasn’t quite got respectable right?”

“You want out you can turn around and leave. Just leave my ship as well.”


	3. Goodnight and Guardian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam has sent Faraday off with Teddy to go get Goodnight but when they find the man he isn't alone.

Chapter 2

Goodnight and Guardian

Guardians rarely, if ever left the Sol system. So when they did it was wise to take notice, especially when you’d just watched one kill a man with a hairpin. The shock on Teddy Q’s face was amusing or it would have been if Faraday wasn’t so shocked himself.

The Guardian in question was a skinny man of what appeared to be Earth Asian descent and was armed to the teeth with a total of two of the most powerful blasters Faraday had ever seen and at least a thousand knives. Then, if all of that wasn’t enough their was the damn hairpin which was pretty and sharp and deadly, apparently.

The fact that the Guardian was traveling with Goodnight Robicheaux was even more of a surprise because not only could the man probably defend himself, he was also a man and Guardian’s tended to bond with woman.

“So, how’d you two meet?” Faraday finally asked Goodnight after a bit of idle chatter.

Goodnight laughs and turns to look at the Guardian. “How did we meet, Billy?” He asks, a soft expression on his face that made Faraday feel like he was invading their privacy.

The Guardian, whose name was apparently Billy just gave Goodnight a flat look and handed him his cigarette to puff on. Goodnight handed it back and nodded.

“I was serving a warrant on Billy here, from the Intersystem Space Station, back when it was still in construction,” Goodnight started and Faraday winced.

The Station had been Hell, literal Hell when it was still under construction. Faraday had almost ended up there himself but he’d run into someone who’d been there and decided against it.

Goodnight just kept talking, “I found him in a tiny backwater bar on the far side of the planet from a spaceport. The men there didn’t take kindly to the color of his skin. I watch in awe as this petite son of a bitch takes on the entire bar bare knuckled. And i say to myself Goodnight ‘this is not a man to arrest, this is a man to befriend’. So I bought him a drink and I woke up the next morning with the worst hangover I have ever had. At first I didn’t notice anything off, I was on my ship and in my own bed but then I opened my eyes.”

There was a pause as Goodnight took a swig of his whiskey.

“Billy had taken up residence on my floor for the night as it turned out and I noticed two things that I hadn’t noticed the night before. One, he was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in a long time and two, the Station didn’t tell me something because my bounty has Guardian marks inked across his cheeks.”

“Wait, you didn’t know, most people can sense them.” Faraday says, shocked.

Goodnight shrugged. “I don’t have a drop of magic in my blood, part of the reason Billy decided to bond me, probably part of the reason the Station picked me to go after him. Turns out Billy here was still in training and he’d been kidnapped on one of those trips the Temple takes to the outlying systems.”

“Did you call the Temple?” Faraday asked.

“Of course I called the Temple, what kind of an idiot do you take me for?” Goodnight exclaims. “But by the time they’d gotten anything done Billy had decided to stick around and there wasn’t much they could do about it.”

“Where you go, he goes,” Faraday said, “you got a ship of your own.?”

“Nah,” Goodnight said, “we don’t need one so we don’t bother, we’ve been riding on commercial ships in first class.”

“What was that warrant for anyway?” Faraday asks. “Killing a man with a hair pin?”

Goodnight blinks at him for a minute and then laughs, it’s a deep belly laugh and it somehow makes Faraday relax just the slightest bit. Billy just cocked his head and examined Faraday with bright, electric green eyes and Faraday tensed up all over again.

“That is funny,” the Guardian said and the markings on his cheeks shift slightly in the bar’s half-light.

“Chisolm gave me directions to his ship, so we might as well take mine if you’re coming.” Faraday says and Teddy Q shifts next to him, obviously uneasy but unwilling to verbalize it.

“Of course we’re coming with you, it’s been awhile since I’ve seen him and I do owe him. I pay my debts.” The older man said with a nod and stood from his chair.

Faraday stood too and took a deep breath, “You alright with flying in an Organic?”

Some folk weren’t, they got strange around ships with a brain. It was the reason most people didn’t like Technopaths, though there were a lot of reasons not to like Technopaths if he was being honest with himself. But Faraday likes these two and he doesn’t want them to ruin that by being assholes around Jack.

“Never been on one,” Goodnight says and Billy shrugs, “Never even seen one.”

Faraday stares because he’s never met someone who hasn’t at least seen an Organic ship before. They aren’t exactly common but they aren’t rare either, some people prefer them to Inorganics because there’s no risk of them having a Construct inside the metal. Jack was the only notable exception to that rule but no one knows about that, no one still alive anyway.

Well, that wasn’t exactly true, the ship that spawned Jack and her captain probably had a general idea of what he was going to do. They had to have known he was a Technopath and no Technopath had been gifted with an Organic before. Faraday had been shocked when he’d woken up one morning to the ship’s captain knocking on his door and even more shocked when he’d handed him a foot long seed shaped thing that felt like it was breathing.

“She says you can have him,” the captain had said, “just don’t hurt him.” And then she had walked away, leaving Faraday gaping after her in the doorway to his room, clutching Jack to his chest.

Faraday shakes the memory off and tilts his head at the two incredibly strange men in front of him. He grins at them and gestured to the door.

“Let’s go, I’ve got booze on the ship,” he says.

“Is that safe?” Teddy Q asks with a frown at the same time Goodnight lets out a raucous laugh.

“You, my friend, are my kind of man,” the older man says and the corner of Billy’s mouth twitches up.

“Careful, Goody,” Billy said, “I might get jealous.”

“Oh, mon cher, you know there’s no one else, no one else,” Goodnight said and the tender love in his eyes was almost too much for Faraday to look at.

He feels like he’s intruding and then Goodnight leans down and… yeah, that’s a kiss. And oh look tongue.

Faraday suddenly and abruptly realizes exactly why most Guardians are bonded to woman. And he’s about to have a boner because, wow, that’s hot, did anyone else know that Guardians could pur or that their marks glowed. Faraday should probably stop staring, he feels a bit like a voyeur right now.

He cleared his throat and swallowed thickly as Goodnight pulled away from Billy. Faraday turned to look at Teddy Q, the kid looked like a pirate in a tractor beam, he almost feels sorry for him.


	4. A Mexican Cyborg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chisolm brings back a sexy Mexican cyborg, Faraday has objections about this, most of this has to do with the fact that he is drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, Vasquez and Faraday get into a bit of a fight in this, do not worry it is resolved. And while I'm at it so are Faraday's emotional issues, although that doesn't happen until the very end.

Chapter 3

A Mexican Cyborg

They’d made it to Chisolm’s ship and into one of its docking bays without too much fuss. It’s an Inorganic but it doesn’t feel like it has a Construct, which is a good thing.

Faraday hated being around Constructs that weren’t his, they were all assholes. His Constructs were assholes too but they were the fun kind of asshole. Plus it just felt wrong to be around them, like someone was rubbing sandpaper lightly over his skin.

His suspicions were confirmed when a holographic AI popped up and began directing them towards the common area where Goodnight and Faraday proceeded to drink all of the liquor Faraday had stashed on Jack. Teddy Q had watched it happen in mild horror and Billy had looked on fondly.

By the time Chisolm showed back up they were both mildly drunk so Faraday couldn’t really be blamed for his reaction when he saw the new person the Officer had picked up.

He was tall with dark hair and tan skin. There was a decent amount of scruff on his chin and cheeks but not enough for him to look like a dock worker. He wore a black vest over a white shirt and there were two shiny, chrome blasters strapped to his hips. He moved like a large cat and was grinning like a coyote.

Faraday may have been drooling and then he saw the eyes. One was a dark brown and human, the other wasn’t. The iris was blue and the pupil was glowing bright red.

Cybernetic eye.

Faraday went still as he took in the patches of other modifications. Most of his right arm, the pinky finger of his left hand. He was standing differently too, like one leg was heavier than the other.

Faraday’s mind sense exploded with light as he ran his power over the man. He was a perfect web of organic and inorganic and something inside Faraday, the animal part he tended to listen to too often, keened. He wanted him, wanted to run his hands over him, to worship him, to feel every single modification that had been made to his body. He wanted to enhance the tech, surround it with his power, let the very essence of his being sink into the other man until nothing could touch him but Faraday.

“YOU BROUGHT A GODDAMNED CONSTRUCT WITH YOU!” Faraday yelled as he scrambled to his feet because that was a cyborg and he needed to distract himself from his rapidly hardening cock.

Chisolm raised an eyebrow, “So what if I did? Everyone this is Vasquez, he’s going to be helping us with Bogue.”

The cyborg behind him bristled at Faraday’s outburst.

“So, what? So, what!” Faraday raged. “Every single Construct I’ve met has either had the rule book so far up their ass they know it by heart, or are so unstable they make Star Seers look sane!”

The cyborg snaps and starts cursing in… Spanish. Well, shit, the cyborg’s a Mexican. Faraday is about to get his ass handed to him.

“You think I’d let one of those sick freaks into my head, guero!” He snaps, fury clear on his face.

Faraday was abruptly on his back with a metal hand clamped around his throat. He chokes and fuck that tech felt even better pressed up against his skin. That should not be hot but anger looked good on Vasquez and the strength behind that arm couldn’t all be cyberneticly enhanced.

“I am a survivor of the Massacres, guero!” Vasquez hisses. “Do not disrespect the memories of those I watched die by implying I let one of those bastards into my skin, my brain, my tech.”

“Got it,” Faraday said, trying not to wheeze as he tried to breath past the pressure on his windpipe.

Vasquez let go and stood in one smooth, graceful movement that gave Faraday a really good look at how tight his pants were. He swallowed and managed to prop himself up on his elbows.

That had been dangerous and now Faraday was going to have to keep an even closer watch on his own abilities. Vasquez would kill him in an instant if he found out that Faraday was a Technopath and he, frankly, wouldn’t blame him.

The Massacres had been a shit show, a complete and utter shit show. Faraday knew that and he’d only been eight when the full story had come out and it had been going on for at least five years at that point.

The Cyborgs weren’t a species unto themselves exactly but the webbing of man and machine made it pretty damn close. It wasn’t true but there was an argument for declaring them inorganic and inorganics had less fundamental rights than organics did, even if they were sentient. And there wasn’t much that a Technopath couldn’t legally do to an inorganic.

One enterprising young Technopath had taken advantage of that loophole, paid off his local law enforcement, and gathered a few like minded friends. Faraday didn’t know his name, Faraday didn’t want to know his name, scum like that didn’t deserve a name.

The group had started experimenting on the local cyborg population they pulled things out and dissected them, made their own tech against them. And then they’d started shoving Constructs into their software, breathing life into beings that were already alive.

Faraday had seen it once, in an inorganic ship. The two Constructs had ripped each other to shreds until one was dead and the other so thoroughly damaged that the Technopath who’d created it could puppet it however she wished. Faraday had stared at her grinning, proud face as she’d offered to teach him how to do it and then buried a blaster bolt between her eyes.

Then, when the Technopaths were done they’d set their cyborgs loose on the rest of the local cyborgs. The authorities had done nothing to stop it, they were only meant to protect organic life and cyborgs weren’t technically organic.

A few years later they’d moved onto trying to make their own cyborgs out of the local normal children. A few of those experiments had even succeeded.

Faraday wonders if Vasquez was one of those children or if he had been born a cyborg. It wouldn’t really matter either way but he suspected the latter to be true, the joining of flesh and metal was seamless from what he could feel of it. And he holds himself like he’s proud of what he is, not like a victim, not like someone who was forced into his own skin.

“Here, guero,” Vasquez says from somewhere above Faraday and a small jar of bruise cream landed in Faraday’s lap, “put that on before it bruises.”

Faraday shakes off his thoughts and manages to pull himself up into a crouch. At least the cyborg wasn’t a complete asshole, the choking aside he seemed like a decent man, though that could just be his libido talking.


End file.
